CHAPTER 2: HISTORY OF FRANCHISE AND NEGOTIATIONS ON THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM
The electoral system is more than just a formula for allocating seats in legislative bodies. It is essentially about the fulfilment of citizenship. This relates to fundamental rights that each individual has, both inherent to oneself and in relation to the state. Throughout time, and in various parts of the world, franchise has had a tortured history. It was never conferred unconditionally but has been subject to all manner of conditions – including property, income, gender and race.
South Africa has been no exception. Like most former colonies, the South African state – from colonialism to the Union and apartheid – distinguished itself by separating indigeneity from franchise. This inevitably made franchise contentious, a source of conflict that spanned more than 140 years, marked by death, imprisonment, maiming and banishment. Consequently, franchise took on a different meaning, beyond the status of rights. It became an emotive, if not a spiritual, issue whose exercise is not simply about the fulfilment of rights, but also to honour South Africa’s initial advocates.
This chapter provides an account of the history of franchise in South Africa until the early 1990s when negotiations established the basis upon which the country’s democratic dispensation was established. It is divided into four sections. The first section looks at the beginning of non-racial franchise in both the Cape and Natal colonies in the 1850s, drawing attention to how native franchise evolved unevenly in the two British colonies. In the second section, focus shifts to the various measures that were subsequently introduced to limit native franchise and the reasons behind the disenfranchisement. The third section highlights the final blows to the native franchise, and the attendant dummy institutions that were introduced to create a veneer of representation. The final section concludes with an explanation on why the drafters of the post-apartheid Constitution adopted the electoral system used for the 1994 election. The conclusion accounts for the choice of the system, with a specific reference to how it was prefigured by history and contemporary concerns.
COLONIAL PERIOD: ORIGINS OF FRANCHISE - A COMBINATION OF VALUES AND PROTECTION OF PROPERTY
Franchise in South Africa has its origins initially in the Cape and Natal colonies. It was enshrined in the Constitution that granted the two British colonies representative government in 1853 and 1856 respectively. Previously, the Governor was solely in charge, and later a Legislative Council was set up, made up of a combination of officials and publicly nominated members. The Legislative Council only had advisory powers and thus the Governor could overlook its advice, which he did frequently. Inevitably, both the colonial policy and the exercise of executive power, which rested with the Governor, did not always accord with the powerful interests in the settler community.
The constant clash between the will of the people and Governor’s despotic powers, eventually heightened the call in the 1840s, for representative government, with the Cape leading the call. Colonists petitioned the British government. It was about more than the Governor’s despotism, they also decried mismanagement of their taxes and disbursement of patronage. Additionally, signs that the Governor’s office and the Legislative Council were losing legitimacy, also threatened to breakdown authority, which the British wanted to prevent by all means. While it echoed forcefully in the 1840s, the call for representative government in the Cape went back decades earlier. Divisions among the settler community – i.e. Dutch and English – and the plight of the Coloured community held back the British government from granting representative government. The English feared that the numerically strong Dutch population would swamp them. John Fairbairn, the editor of the Cape Town-based, South African Commercial Advertiser, said: “We dislike the Despotism of One; but we think the Despotism of Fifty Koeberg Boers – or of Fifty who could easily secure their votes – Fifty thousand times worse.”6 The Dutch were also notorious for their prejudice against the Coloured population, which placed them at a risk of being disadvantaged under a Dutch-dominated legislature and government.
The concern for the welfare of the Coloured population reflected the strong influence of liberal values within the British officialdom at the time. This had been evident years earlier with the promulgation of a law that abolished slavery and granted equal rights to “the Hottentots and other free persons of colour”. As a result, Coloured voters took part in municipal elections. The balance of power in the Cape colony, therefore, depended on qualifications for franchise. Some proposed a low qualification at £25 property value, others a high one at £50. Each threshold pre-determined who would vote or could not vote. The English, a significant portion of whom were merchants and wealthy, opposed a low franchise qualification. They feared it would enable the Dutch and Coloured population, which outnumbered the English, to vote in large numbers and, upon ascending to power, introduce laws that were inimical to their financial interests.
Other beneficiaries of the low qualification were the Coloured population. Though favourably predisposed towards them, a large section of the English population did not think Coloured voters would utilise their rights and, if they did, would vote for them. They simply were not certain how Coloureds would vote and thus would not leave their fate to an uncertain outcome. Ultimately, the low franchise qualification of £25 found a strong alliance of advocates. It included the Dutch, humanitarians, colonial bureaucrats and, of course, the Coloured voters themselves.
While not enamoured with Coloureds exercising the same rights as them, the Dutch could not oppose the low franchise threshold, because it stood to benefit them as well. If they opposed it to exclude Coloureds, some among them would also be excluded. While opinion in the colonial administration varied, the Attorney-General and Lieutenant-Governor at the time, William Porter and Henry Darling respectively, were forceful supporters of the low franchise threshold and among the drafters of the Constitution. Porter looked at low qualifications as a way of enticing feuding groupings into democratic institutions to deflate physical confrontation. In a colony already fraught with hostilities, exclusion would fan tensions even further, making violent confrontations more frequent. “I would rather meet the Hottentot at the hustings voting for his representative, than meet the Hottentot in the wilds with his gun upon his shoulder,” said Porter. Represented in the legislature, Porter believed, the aggrieved segments of the colony would be less inclined to turn to violence. Instead, they would elect their own representatives to plead their case in the legislature. And so non-racial franchise began at the Cape, at the moment of the inauguration of representative government in 1853.
For the following 30 years, the schism that was feared would widen between the English and Dutch, did not materialise. The status quo continued, with the English remaining politically dominant. Coloured votes were instrumental in that dominance, while the numerically preponderant Dutch population were not entirely enthusiastic voters. A party system did not emerge until much later in the 1880s.
In Natal, however, native franchise assumed an entirely different route in the subsequent years. While its constitution allowed for non-racial franchise, the colony hardly had supporters for native franchise, as was in the Cape. Natal’s officialdom did not share the lofty ideas of acculturation and a shared society. They believed in segregation, with Africans subject to customary law, under their own chiefs. As subjects under customary law, a massive part of the native population was excluded from consideration for franchise.
There was recognition, however, that a few among the native population had been “Westernised”. Those were exempted from customary and chiefly rule and allowed to apply for franchise. The qualification was comparatively high, however: occupation of property worth £50. As a result, “virtually no African ever qualified for the franchise.” In 1865, responding to settlers’ concerns that more natives would qualify, a new law was introduced to make qualification even more stringent. One had to show proof of a 12-year long residence in Natal and have three white residents vouch for him, with the support of a magistrate. Even then, the Governor-General had to call a public meeting to hear if there were any objections to the application for franchise. Ultimately, the Governor-General had the discretion to decide.
The Indian population, which had initially arrived from 1860 and grew significantly after 1870, was no exception. Settlers wanted to make sure that, like Africans, Indians did not constitute an electoral threat. To this end, the colonial authority introduced the Franchise Act of 1896, which stipulated, among others, that individuals “whose country of origin did not have representative institutions founded on parliamentary franchise” did not qualify for the vote in Natal.
ASSAULT ON NON-RACIAL FRANCHISE
The relative acceptance of the non-racial franchise in the Cape was interrupted in the second half of the 1880s. Native franchise came under intense criticism and revision. The change of attitude was due to two factors: the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the rapid increase in the number of native voters. Once mobilised along racial lines with a political party of their own, the Afrikaner Bond, the Dutch descendants, who initially referred to themselves as Afrikanders, saw native franchise as a stumbling block to their political ascendancy. They aimed their attacks at it, with the help of former beneficiaries of natives, the English-speaking politicians.
Although they had agreed on the low franchise qualification earlier, the English and Dutch financial and cultural interests never quite converged. Both the state and public life became increasingly Anglicised. Dutch speakers were no longer employable in the English-medium bureaucracy. In addition, Afrikaner farmers and the emerging financial class did not feel sufficiently supported by the colonial state. They experienced the state as biased towards the English. The Dutch lacked the political power to force concessions from the government. They could only plead and hope for a sympathetic government ear. Generally, officialdom in Natal was not keen on the native franchise, they simply put up a pretence.
To improve the situation, the Dutch elite resolved to turn their attention to their compatriots, assuming that this would result in more support for their cause, to make them into their political base. At the forefront was an alliance of farmers and middle- and financial classes. However, while sharing descent, the elite classes lacked a shared sense of belonging with their working-class counterparts. The class differences were accentuated by cultural and linguistic markers. The middle to upper classes continued to speak Dutch, while the working class and the downtrodden had begun to speak locally grown dialects. There was little that made Dutch descendants identify with each other, until the Afrikaner Bond took it upon itself to manufacture cohesion and reinvent a new linguistic affinity.
Formed in 1880, the Afrikaner Bond supported initiatives to restore cultural ties, through inventing a common language, Afrikaans. This consolidated ties beyond a somewhat forgotten common ancestry. The newly found linguistic kingship reminded them of their connectedness and Afrikaans literature emerged to popularise the language, which was also taught at schools. Just as Afrikaner nationalism was rising, so was the number of native voters. The colonial state continued with conquest after granting representative government in the 1850s. As colonial boundaries expanded with every war, more native citizens were added to the voters’ roll, especially in the 1880s. To be sure, the growth of native voters was not simply the result of continuing conquest. Old frontier towns also experienced growth in native voters. For example, in just four years, Aliwal North alone, experienced a spike from 260 (out of 1 280 registered voters) in 1882, to 800 (out of 1 486 registered voters) in 1886. Native voters outnumbered settlers.
The growth of native voters was partly the result of advocacy. A notable segment of an educated elite, which took a strong interest in political activism, had grown by the 1870s. Its activism was felt in both the media and public life generally. They were graduates of missionary schools, which received a boost from the colonial government from the 1850s. Supported solely by missionaries, the colonial state took upon itself to fund native schools as part of its ‘civilising mission’. The idea was to cultivate a segment within the native society that shared the same ideas as the colonial ruling elite. Once socialised in Western values, and having adopted its lifestyle, this elite would in turn become advocates for the acceptance of Western rule and its ethos.
Indeed, the educated elite would go on to take the lead in the public discourse on native matters. The pages of the missionary-owned bilingual newspaper, Isigidimi Sama-Xosa (or Christian Express), which was established in 1870, published rigorous debates between the African elite and missionaries on a range of social issues. It was at this newspaper that the natives saw Elijah Makiwane rise as the first editor among their own ranks. Another native journalist, John Tengo Jabavu, would later succeed Makiwane at the Isigidimi.
Most of the native elite disapproved of the newspaper because of what they saw as restraint on political coverage and debates. This reflected the rising assertiveness among this group, which was to lead, later in 1884, to the establishment of a truly secular newspaper, Imvo ZabaNtsundu (The Opinion of People of Colour) in 1884. Edited by Jabavu, Imvo set out not only to cover politics, but also to inform and educate its readers. Efforts were made to cover every political event, and report on important speeches and new legislation or policy at the Cape Legislature. More coverage was given to elections. Getting native voters to take part in the electoral process was central in Jabavu’s mission. He urged them to vote for politicians who supported their interests, the so-called “friends of the natives”. These happened to be English-speaking politicians, who tended to have a liberal orientation towards the African franchise.
Alongside the media was an emerging and vibrant associational life. Organisations, focused on various local issues - such as education and salaries - sprung up to advocate for the cause of their interest groups. The Native Educational Association, formed in 1880, was among them. It was formed mainly by teachers, but extended its interest beyond educational matters that included, delving into politics. Another was Imbumba YamaNyama formed in 1882, which was exclusively political, aimed to unite Africans behind a common cause, and to vote for fellow natives.
Coupled with an assertive native class, who were opinion-makers within their community, the growing numbers of native voters triggered fear among settlers, that natives might start voting for fellow natives. If that were to pass, settlers dreaded that their interests would be in danger. And so, in 1887, urged strongly by the old foes of native franchise, Afrikaner Bond, the English-dominated legislature launched the initial salvo against the native franchise.
A new legislation, which came into effect on the first of September 1887, introduced changes on occupancy qualification and in the administration of registrations. Dubbed uthung’ umlomo (stitching of the mouth) by natives, this law scrapped communal land as an occupancy qualification, requiring instead individual tenure. Most natives lived on communal land, and those who occupied individual plots hardly had title deeds. The zeal to disenfranchise natives also drew attention to the constitutional provision that limited franchise to natural-born or naturalised British subjects. Until this point, it had been taken for granted that all who became British subjects, following annexation, automatically qualified for franchise. Now, there was a revised interpretation that only those born after their territory had been conquered qualified for franchise.
Once started in 1887, a series of disfranchisement measures followed. In 189217 occupancy qualification was increased from £25 to £75; and voters to sign their names and write their addresses and occupations. Further attack followed in 1894.18 This elevated colonial duplicity to a higher level. The new law scrapped communal tenure, replacing it with individual tenure instead. The aim was to avail labour to the emerging mines, which had proven difficult while natives still had means of subsistence. Introducing individual tenure ensured that only the direct owner of the land, such as the head of the family, would have title deeds, prohibiting access to their dependants. Accompanying this prohibition was the imposition of labour tax on men that didn’t own a plot. Coupled with loss of subsistence, the tax was designed to force natives into wage labour. However, native individual tenure was not regarded as a qualification for franchise. This underlined the purpose of the 1894 legislation: to force natives into wage labour, not enfranchise them.
The barrage of legislative assaults, as the 19th century neared to a close, had the intended effect of disfranchising a substantial portion of native voters. A comparison of the voters’ roll in 1886 and 1887 shows a stark decline. In the Herschel district, the number of natives dropped to 374 in 1887, from 797 in 1886; from 766 to 517 at Queens Town’s Kamastone district; from 802 to 483 at Thembuland; and from 1 023 to 706 at Victoria East. By 1891, in the frontier districts19 alone, the decline stood at 33%; and the 1894 legislative assault was the last delivered on the native franchise under the Cape colony. The level of electoral participation among natives, by this time, was even worse in Natal. In 1903, for instance, the South African Native Affairs Commission “found there were only two Africans on the voters’ roll.”
The subject of native franchise would come up, once again, as the colonies fused towards forming the Union. Once established in 1910, subsequent proceedings within the Union would deal a fatal blow on native franchise. The reopening of the subject of native franchise just as the 20th century began, followed the defeat of the Boer republics in the 1899-1902 War. Although defeated in war, the Boer republics - i.e. Transvaal and the Orange Free State – demanded, as a condition to their joining the Union, that native franchise not be extended to their provinces. The Transvaal government was reluctant to grant franchise even to Uitlanders – i.e. foreigners – who had grown to constitute a majority of the population. They had to have lived in the republic for 14 years before qualifying, something that Uitlanders bitterly opposed and became a source of tension between Transvaal and the British. Just like their brethren in the Cape colony and for similar reasons, the Boers were determined foes of native franchise. Already no longer advocates of equality, the English conceded to the demand. And so it was that the Union was inaugurated without native franchise in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
The attack on franchise was met with the formation of Native Vigilance Associations. These were bodies set up, in the various locales of the Cape colony, to get natives registered and ward off fraudulent attempts at disfranchisement. A new newspaper also emerged in 1897, Izwi Labantu, to counterpose Imvo, which was no longer strident in its advocacy for African franchise. Instead, Imvo had maintained its support for the English-speaking politicians who made common cause with the Afrikaner Bond, against native franchise. English-speaking politicians were funders of Imvo. Initially edited by Nathaniel Mhalla, Izwi was steadfast in its support for the native franchise. Interestingly, Izwi got part of its start-up capital from Cecil Rhodes, who had hoped to use it to canvass for him. Rhodes, who had promised “equality for all civilised men”, would also prove insincere in his claims.
UNION AND REPUBLIC
As the talks of unification gained momentum in the first decade of the 20th century, the protest began to take a national form. Natives throughout the envisaged Union faced a similar enemy. Provincial-wide formations – i.e. Native Congresses – sprung up, with their own mouthpieces. In addition to Izwi in the Cape, the Natal Native Congress (NNC) had Ipepa lo Hlanga, set up in 1898, whose editor, Mark Radebe, was also the secretary of the NNC. Ipepa was succeeded by Ilanga Lase Natal. Native agitators had fully realised the importance not only of organising, but also of having their own mouthpieces to articulate their cause (albeit reliance on settler capital that imposed limitations).
As the Union was about to be formed, the various native congresses convened in 1909, in what was dubbed the South African Natives Convention. They drew a uniform response to their anticipated precarious future under the envisaged state, underscoring their objections to the limitation of franchise, and began moving towards forming a national organisation. A delegation was sent to England to petition both Parliament and the Crown not to approve the draft Union Constitution. They made a moral appeal, to the collective conscience of the British establishment: “Nowhere has it been suggested that [voting rights] have ever been abused; on the contrary, the judicious manner in which they have been exercised on the whole has received the unstinted approbation of many colonial statements.”
The petition was unheeded. There was some pretence at protecting the existing franchise with the provision that the native franchise could only be repealed by a two-thirds majority in Parliament. However, that hardly offered any protection, as opinion within the settler community was converging around anti-native franchise. On August 31, 1909, the opening line of the editorial of Imvo registered the initial reaction: “The blow has fallen …”. The editorial went on to urge its readers to persevere:
The Natives - men, women and children must bend their energies to the advancement of themselves in all that civilization and true Christianity means, so that their claim to equality of treatment for all civilized British subjects may be irresistible. Let us have faith in the GOD who rules over all, and in the justice of our cause, and let us be patient in the well doing, and be willing like the Syro-Phoenician women who accept thankfully even the crumbs of justice which fell to our lot from the Constitution, while mentally and constitutionally claiming our full heritage.
A fully-fledged national organisation, the South African Native National Congress (ANNC), later renamed the African National Congress (ANC), was eventually formed in 1912. Products of both missionary schools and a humanistic tradition – i.e. Ubuntu - the founders of the ANNC, alongside the Coloured People’s Association and the Natal Indian Congress, remained the true bearers of the non-racial, liberal tradition. They not only continued making the call for non-racialism but also defied racial stereotypes. The membership of the newly formed ANC was exclusive to Africans. This was not a sign of loss of faith in non-racialism, but a statement of self-agency. They had to rely on themselves, not on the Europeans, to secure equality. The so-called liberals could no longer be trusted. “Ungaz’ umthembe umlungu”, began the refrain within the African community.
The spirit of self-reliance, now embodied in the ANC, had manifested a year earlier. Mpilo Benson Rubusana contested the 1911 election for the then exclusively white Cape provincial legislature. This was the first ever native candidature and he stood at the Thembuland constituency. Hitherto, Africans had always voted for whites to represent them. Accustomed to their role as spokespeople, leading “liberal” personalities, such as Crewe Whitaker and Rose-Innes, objected to Rubusana’s candidature. They said natives were better served by white representatives, and native candidates might just harden white attitudes against natives even further, as they triggered fears of being swamped.
Rubusana ignored the cacophony shouting down his candidature. His opponents were two white candidates, John Tredwell Houghton-Gray and Clarke Fraser. Rubusana relied on the native voters, who numbered 1 399, out of a total of 2 846 registered voters in the Thembuland constituency. On 13 September 1911, he wrote in the Imvo, appealing to the readers:
I am one of you. All the efforts I have made for my people should speak for themselves to you … My message to you is that I would like to represent you in Parliament and speak on your behalf. For that to happen, you need to unite and give me your votes. In that way, I will triumph and will be able to represent you as we live in difficult times under this Union, which also includes Transvaal, those from Natal and those from the Free State. All of these have negative things to say about us, Africans. I am therefore saying we need to do more in such times by placing one of us in Parliament to represent us instead of someone we do not know.
When the results were announced, history was made. Rubusana, the first native candidate for the Cape colony legislature, won by 766 votes, compared to Gray’s 741 and Clarke’s 235. He won by a narrow margin, enabled by the split vote among white voters. The editorial of Ilanga LaseNatal, ululated:
Indeed, a happy sign to this fatherland and one of which should calm many a troubled breast, proving as it does that white men can and still recognise ability even in a black man. This is indeed a rich signal of hope for those who work and pray for the regeneration of Africa, that is the Africa in which the white man and the black man, though different, shall both work, respect and help one another.
Rubusana’s historic victory, however, was not to be repeated. Jabavu, who had afforded Rubusana space on his newspaper to campaign in 1911, would turn against him in 1914. He stood against Rubusana in that election as relations between the two deteriorated. Jabavu had come under increasing pressure from his English-politician allies to maintain his support for them. This included supporting them in promulgating the 1913 Land Act that introduced territorial segregation, leaving natives’ ownership of land squeezed into 13% of the South African land surface.
Jabavu did not denounce the dispossession. Instead, he claimed that natives accepted the draconian legislation, provoking a fierce reaction from Solomon Plaatje, who derided Jabavu for misleading the public.27 A leading native personality and an editor in his own right, Plaatje challenged Jabavu to a public debate to test if indeed natives consented to their own dispossession. Jabavu refused the challenge, which proved Plaatje’s assertion that his claims were false. His electoral challenge against Rubusana aided the cause of the so-called liberals to exclude native representation in the Cape legislature. The native vote was split between Jabavu and Rubusana, something he had most likely anticipated, to enable the victory of a white candidate.
Political debates in the build-up to Union in 1910, likewise saw the emergence of a movement advocating for a woman’s right to vote inspired by similar campaigns around the world at the time. The first women’s suffrage groups began forming in the 1890s in South Africa and suffrage groups in the former colonies came together in 1911 to form the Women’s Enfranchisement Association of the Union (WEAU), which would play an important role in advocating for women’s right to vote in the new Union.
The organisation was primarily made up of upper- and middle-class English-speaking white women, reflecting the racial and class divisions of the time. By writing to MPs and holding public events, the WEAU promoted their cause for women to be granted the right to vote on the same terms as men – implying the same racial and property requirements of the franchise during this period. Their campaign did not seek to challenge the racial discrimination of the franchise and this focus on securing the franchise for white women was both a reflection of its membership and a strategic choice by the organisation, which wanted to avoid alienating the political elite preoccupied with debates over the non-racial franchise at the time.
The intersection between these two debates played into the calculations of those seeking to limit the non-racial franchise with Prime Minister Hertzog realising that the enfranchisement of white women would bolster the votes needed to rescind the non-racial Cape franchise and move forward the government’s segregationist legislation. This led to the adoption of the Women’s Enfranchisement Act in 1930, extending the right to vote to all white women allowing them to vote for the first time in the 1933 election in which the first woman, Leila Reitz, was elected to Parliament.
THE FATAL BLOW ON NATIVE FRANCHISE
Now without any representation, natives nonetheless remained relentless in their call for the extension of franchise throughout the Union. They continued to make their protests in various newspapers and multiple appearances before the South African Native Affairs Commission. The official response was an even more hardened attitude.
As the third decade of the 20th century was nearing to a close, the Union government passed the Native Administrative Act of 1927. This Act shifted natives further away from citizenship. It decreed that they were naturally subjects, regardless of their own preference, or worldviews: in other words, natives could never qualify for citizenship within the Union. Instead, they were ordered to participate in traditional institutions, known in indigenous languages as inkundla or lekgotla, which were headed by chiefs. Officialdom even appointed chiefs where none existed, supposedly to allow all-round representation.
Many of the new appointees into chieftaincy did not have any connection with royalty. They were simply appointed on account of their pledged loyalty to officialdom. Their role was not to enable free and democratic participation in accordance with customary practices of rule by consensus. Rather, they were urged to become local despots. Chiefly rule degenerated to a form of “command and obey.”
After decreeing natives intrinsically “tribal”, the next step was to remove them from the common voters’ roll in 1936, thereby also denying them direct representation. In lieu of their removal, the Native Representative Act introduced the Native Representative Council through which natives elected each other, and their representatives would then advise the government about their needs. Granted their own representative body, officialdom rationalised that natives would no longer be allowed to elect fellow natives Parliament. Instead, they would vote for whites to represent them. In the meantime, six years earlier, officialdom had extended franchise to white women.
Following the natives, Coloureds were the next targets of disenfranchisement. Afrikaner nationalists wanted complete segregation both institutionally and socially. They christened the idea, apartheid – i.e. separate development - predicated on racial prejudice. Their initial attempt in 1951 to remove Coloured voters from the common voters’ roll32 failed, as the Supreme Court annulled the law.
The Nationalist Party’s response was to orchestrate Parliamentary sovereignty, while weakening the judiciary. New laws were introduced to divest the Supreme Court of judicial review powers to arbitrate over the validity of a law. The court itself was enlarged, from 5 to 11, with NP loyalists (just in case the court had to preside over a law that the NP wanted passed). To secure the two-thirds majority in Parliament, the NP government also enlarged the Senate and, subsequently, manipulated procedures to ensure that the newly elected Senators were their members. Now with an enlarged representation in Parliament, the NP was able to pass the new law in 1956, removing Coloureds from the common roll, and placing them in a separate roll. The Coloureds would, henceforth, also elect whites to represent them. When the new law was appealed, the NP-friendly restructured Appeal Court agreed with Parliament.
By the end of the 1950s non-racial franchise in South Africa had ended. The advocacy, however, continued. The Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955 by multiple parties representing South Africa’s racial diversity, echoed the demand for a non-racial franchise. This was a reiteration of a demand made, more than a decade earlier, in the historic document, African Claims. The liberal voices, which had largely turned hostile in the 1890s, were also heard once again from the early 1960s, in support of a non-racial franchise through the Progressive Federal Party (PFP).
The government’s response was further territorial and institutional segregation. Already decreed subjects in 1927, and in keeping with apartheid, Africans were granted their own homelands. Each of South Africa’s multiple ethnic groups had its own Bantustan. Beginning as self-rule territories in the 1960s, some attained ‘independence’ in the 1970s, with their own Parliament. Each was headed by a paramount chief in keeping with the supposed African tradition, but elections were later introduced to create a veneer of democracy. In reality, though, chiefs, who were on the payroll of the apartheid state, remained in charge. Those who defied apartheid instructions were dethroned.
TOWARDS ACCEPTANCE OF COMMON CITIZENSHIP AND TRANSITIONAL NEGOTIATIONS
The various machinations, coupled with violent repression, could neither placate nor suppress resistance. Following a revival of political activism in the 1970s, the 1980s saw an even higher level of the anti-apartheid struggle. The ranks of the liberation movement were swelled by the youth who had left the country following the 1976 Student Uprising. They started returning from the late 1970s, as trained guerrillas, to carry out urban warfare. The revived armed insurgency ignited urban uprisings, which were fanned even more by the call to make South Africa “ungovernable”. A nationwide organisation, the United Democratic Front,34 sprung in 1983 to coordinate the popular uprising.
The government’s response, alongside the customary violence, was the usual machinations and co-option. Through the introduction of the Black Local Authorities (BLAs) in 1982, residents were encouraged to elect councillors and generally participate in local government. Coloureds and Indians were drawn into the newly ‘reformed’ tri-cameral Parliament: House of Delegates (Indians); House Representatives (Coloureds), and the National Assembly (Whites). Neither structure gave blacks genuine power, as they ultimately operated within the parameters of the apartheid state and its logic.
Consequently, both the BLAs and the tri-cameral Parliament were largely rejected. The polls hardly attracted a respectable number of voters. The inaugural election to the tri-cameral Parliament in August 1984, for instance, suffered a markedly low turnout. Only “one in five potential voters actually voted”.35 BLA councillors became targets of violent attacks. They were denounced as ‘sell-outs’ whose participation legitimised apartheid structures. Residents didn’t recognise the BLA councils and refused to pay rates and taxes to register their rejection. “No taxation without representation” was the slogan.
Even more difficult for the apartheid state, most of the world also shared the idea that it was illegitimate. In 1973, the United Nations had declared apartheid “a crime against humanity”. South Africa faced cultural boycotts and economic sanctions. Those who defied the boycotts and competed overseas faced protests. Under pressure from a disinvestment campaign, companies started pulling out of the country. New investments in the country encountered fierce opposition. Apartheid South Africa, by the mid-1980s, was a total outcast. It was unmistakably clear that it suffered a profound crisis of legitimacy.
Ironically, the introduction of the BLAs was itself a concession that apartheid was not working. Though still denying them citizenship, officialdom accepted that the Africans who were resident in urban areas, within the Republic, were permanent. It no longer classified them as “temporary sojourners” in urban areas to provide labour and thereafter return to the Bantustans. Once the government conceded permanent residence to Africans in the Republic, it was a matter of time before the entire apartheid edifice crumbled.
Just as the 2nd half of the 1980s unfolded, informal talks between the exiled ANC and emissaries of P.W. Botha’s government got underway, testing out each other’s thoughts on the post-apartheid settlement. While initiating informal talks and even meeting the famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, Botha was a hesitant reformer. It took his successor, F.W. de Klerk, who was a much younger politician to initiate a definite unravelling of apartheid in 1990.
Expectedly, the electoral system was one of the items tabled for negotiations. The nature of the electoral system settled upon, because it determined the number of seats each won, was to decide both the composition of government and the legislature. The subject itself was of course not new. At its inception in 1910, the Union adopted a relative majority system – i.e. first-past-the-post (FPTP), which survived right up to 1990.
Not all parties were happy with the FPTP system. It affected them unevenly. The major beneficiary was the party-in-government, the National Party. The number of seats it got far exceeded its proportion of the popular vote. Just between 1961 and 1981, for instance, the NP won just more than 50% of the votes but secured about 75% of the seats in Parliament. Other parties decried the disproportional ratio. The NP dismissed the protestation, saying the first-past-the-post guaranteed a stable government.
When negotiating an electoral system for the new democratic South Africa, which would be underpinned by a universal franchise, the NP, however, had a different preference. It now favoured proportional representation (PR). It realised that the FPTP system would be detrimental to it. The system would most likely favour its major rival, the ANC. And the NP had been fearful of being swamped under an ANC-dominated government. This had been a long-standing fear, dating back more than a century in the Cape colony. Now that the universal franchise was imminent, the fear became real. It was also apparent in their negotiation demands, one of which included a rotational presidency, which would secure the NP the presidency, regardless of its electoral support.
Interestingly, the NP’s major rival, the ANC, was not averse either to the PR system. Its reasons, however, were somewhat different. They had to do with its own internal party dynamics as well as the need to enable a smooth transition. Because a PR system afforded a party list, it meant that the ANC leadership would be able to determine the list itself. For a newly unbanned party, which drew its leadership from diverse sectors, with some having been exiled for decades, it was important that it struck a healthy balance in its party list. Moreover, the party was also keen to have its list reflect racial, gender and generational diversity.
In agreeing to the PR system, the ANC also sought to melt away resistance to the transition within the ranks of the NP. The party was alert to the ‘swart gevaar’ that had gripped its main rival. This was partly the reason why the ANC proposed forming a government of national unity, instead of the winning party exclusively forming government; and protecting jobs of senior civil servants for the initial five years of the new government. The ANC’s embrace of the PR system, therefore, was part of a confidence-building measure to enable the transition.
Both observers and scholars of the South African politics lauded the maturity shown by the ANC. Some had not expected the party to agree to a system that resulted, as Arend Lijphart observed back in 1994, in “close to perfect proportionality”.39 That said, others nonetheless warned that the large constituencies – i.e. provincial-wide – and the closed party list, which steered voters to vote for parties instead of individuals, would “lessen accountability”. Electoral system experts Arend Lijphard40 and Andrew Reynolds proposed, even back then, that the country would have to consider designing “smaller constituencies and allowing for an open list”.
Franchise has a long history in South Africa. Its non-racial character was spurred by progressive beliefs in the sameness of humanity, but it quickly succumbed to prejudice and an irrepressible pursuit of material interests. Despite the unkindness of the racist system, which would last for more than a century, the belief in non-racialism, however, endured. Once the racist system could no longer sustain itself, the true bearers of non-racial franchise would insist on a system that was devoid of the brutality of the past, however aggrieved they were. It would not only be enshrined in the Constitution but also protected by the Constitutional Court. The drafters of the Constitution were certain to replace parliamentary sovereignty with a constitutional democracy. And, there was an awareness that, at some point in the future, the electoral system would have to be revised to keep abreast with the times.